In love with Australia <3

Hello dear people,

It took me a little while to write a new blog because the Wifi is never free here.. that's one thing I don't like about Australia, everything is expensive and even the Wifi is not free.. if I want to use Wifi in a hostel I have to pay something like 4 dollars to use Internet for one hour. (1 dollar is 0,73 cents at the moment)
From now on I will write my blog in English so my international friends can read it as well. The last few weeks went so fast. Everyday I fall more in love with the country. Australia does something with me, I feel so happy and so free. The nature is absolutely stunning everywhere you go and the people are so kind. Every day is different and every day is an adventure. I never know what's going to happen and I totally love it!!

In my last blog I told you about Sydney and after that I went couchsurfing in Gosford. I had an amazing time there. I stayed with Tina and her son Archie. Tina is amazing woman. I felt welcome from the first moment we met. There was such a connection between us. I really admire her for her great way of thinking, she is such a positive energy. She showed me around the beautiful nature and beaches and she toke me and another girl who stayed with her (also a couch surfer) shopping at second hand shops. You have a lot of them here and there are so cool and so cheap. Some things are totally new but somebody just didn't were them. In the evenings we did a lot of creative things. I made my own necklace from seashells and we made bracelets and earrings and did some painting as well. She told me a lot about her experiences with traveling. She traveled all around the world for 8 years. So amazing. She was one of the persons who made me so enthusiastic about traveling that it made me decide to stay longer!

I'm going to stay here for a year at least. My plan is to look for a job around Cairns. I may have found something already and after a few months of work I want to travel all around Australia. From Cairns I want to see Alice Springs and after that Darwin, Perth, Victoria, Melbourne and if I have enough time and money off course I want to go to New Zealand and Asia as well.

Okay that about my plans for this year, now I will tell you something about what I did the last few weeks. After my stay with Tina and her son I went to another family at the Central Coast. I stayed with Tracy and Walleed (sorry if I don't write your name correctly haha) and there lovely family. They showed me around and made me feel so welcome. I got really close with them as well. They even let me work in there pizza shop for a week so I could earn some money for my travels. We went to the beach and they showed me around the stunning views up at the mountains. They live next to the beach. So cool. You can almost hear the ocean when your lying in your bed. We had some nice movie nights and we went to a barbecue and a Bali party. I had such a great time. It is so nice meeting local people and see there way of living. One night I got really scared haha. The Aussies love to tell you about all the dangerous animals they have so almost everywhere I come they are thrilled to tell me a scary story haha. This one night I saw a lot of cockroaches (kakkerlakken) they are the most common insect in Australia. In the shower, in the toilet and even when I was in my bed I saw one next to my bed. You can imagine I was almost crying, haha I'm really afraid of spiders and big insects and those cockroaches do get pretty big. The Aussies always tell me about the huntsman (vogelspin) the big hairy ones. Brrr. They tell stories about finding one of them in your room or even on your back. So every night I'm checking if the coast is spider free, haha. Luckily this spider is not dangerous at all. It just looks scary.
After a week with this lovely family I went further on my journey. They even bought my ticket to Byron Bay (it took me 13 hours to get there by bus) so sweet!! It was hard to say goodbye because we got so close. It may sound weird because you only see them for such a short matter of time but it is true that you get so close.

Then I arrived in Byron Bay, witch is a small hippie town next to the beach of course. It was early in the morning and I didn't book anything so I was standing there with my huge backpack witch is almost bigger then me and no clue where to go haha. Luckily there was another Dutch girl with the same problem as me, nothing arranged before and we went to the same hostel together. After arriving at the hostel we went for a walk in Byrons national park. We did a lovely walk to the light house and saw a lot of whales and also dolphins when we were on the top of the mountains. That was so cool! I could stay there for hours. Because it was so high you could see the open see and you could see them jumping and playing around. So amazing! We saw a lot of beautiful birds and a wallaby as well. When we were on the top of the light house it started to storm. There we were on the top of the light house in our shorts because it was such good weather in the morning. We didn't brought our jumper but we definitely wanted to finish the walk around the light house so at the end of the walk we were totally wet and we went shopping. Byron is an amazing place to go shopping, my bag is so full now. Woopsie! I have a problem every time I have to pack my bags because it is almost too full now haha. In the evening we were very tired because we didn't got much sleep the night before but we didn't want to be boring and stay at home so we went to some place to eat something. The place turned out to be a club after dinner so we changed our minds about not going out. We met a lot of other travelers and had a lot of fun. We couldn't stay too long because the next day we had to get up early to go kayaking and see some dolphins. I was really convinced about not taking any medicines for getting seasick but I did regret it a little bit because the ocean was so wild. First we had to carry the kayak all around the beach because the see was too wild to go in. It was so heavy and I already had a muscle ache from the day before. I get really sporty around here because you have so many hills and there a so many national parks that I want to see. The kayaking was so much fun. We had a really big group and some people felt out of the kayak because the ocean was so rough. I prepared myself that I would fell out and would be in the middle of the ocean but luckily that didn't happen. We saw dolphins as well and they were so close. They were jumping around with there babies and it was so amazing to see. Sometimes I'm still wondering myself that I'm in Australia and that I'm so blessed to see all this. After that we went to the beach and fell a sleep because we were so tired. This evening we kooked ourselves a good dinner and I said goodbye to my Dutch friend, Heleen because she was leaving. I went to bed early because I was heading to Noosa the next day. I had to get up at 5 o clock and I would be in the bus for 6 hours. After a few hours in the bus we stopped in Brisbane and I had a strange feeling that I would see Heleen again and there she was!! hahaha I said no this cannot be true hahaha so we were together again. In Noosa we did the national parks together and we went partying in the evening. Again we met a lot of other travelers and we had so much fun. The day after Heleen left again (this time for real haha) and I did the Fraser island tour.

Fraser Island is the biggest sand island in the world and it is only made of sand. This was so amazing to see! We did a tour of two days and drove around the island with a four wheel drive, that was a really bumpy ride! Sometimes we were almost driving in the water and there were a lot of rocks so it was really bumpy. We put on the song bumpy ride haha and we were singing in the car. We went to Lake Mc Kenzie, this is one of the most pure lakes of Australia. There is only one place that is more natural and I'm going there as well. The water is totally see trough and very good for your skin. I swim in the lake and saw a little turtle and big snakes as well. One snake was very little, the death adder and the guide said he was in the top 5 of the most dangerous snakes in the world. He was only one meter away from me I almost stepped on it. It was so cool to see them in the wild. I also saw wild dogs, dingo's and they looked so cute but they are not that cute. One week ago the dingo's attacked people. They only do this because they are very hungry because the people toke away the wild horses on the island were the dingo's were living on. So now they get aggressive when they see people because they know they have food. Very sad because when people give them food they get more aggressive and then they have to get killed. I also saw spiders as big as my hand and I was not scary at all. So proud of me! haha they were actually very pretty with red colors. But these ones are dangerous, they can kill you so you have to be careful with them around. After this amazing time on the island we went back to Noosa and had a after party with our lovely group. The next day I left to a little town called Howard 6 hours away from Noosa, very close to Harvey Bay. So now I'm here with couch surfers again. They are really nice people I can tell already. They live next to the river in the middle of nowhere. The closest village is 13 km aways and there is only one pub and a supermarket haha. I'm really lucky that I have working Internet. That was my story so far. After a few days here I will be going to another couch surfer in mackaj. He lives in the bush and will take me bush walking an climbing mountains etc. with some other couch surfers as well so that will be amazing too! All together I'm having the time of my life!! Love Australia <3